


The Rest is Silence

by anonymous_sibyl



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Community: Ten Years of Buffy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2007-03-02
Updated: 2007-03-02
Packaged: 2017-10-04 03:51:00
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25628
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anonymous_sibyl/pseuds/anonymous_sibyl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Devon's right, everything looks better in the morning.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Rest is Silence

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [](http://community.livejournal.com/tenyearsofbuffy/profile)[**tenyearsofbuffy**](http://community.livejournal.com/tenyearsofbuffy/). Prompt was Oz/Willow: After Tara dies, Oz comes back for her. Title is, of course, from Hamlet.
> 
> This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/us/). None of the media or characters written about in my fanfiction belong to me and I make no profit from these works. 

In telling their tale they kept adding on to Willow, weighing her down with their descriptions. Yellow crayon-breaky. Black-veiny. The uplifted sounds at the end did nothing to make the terms any less heavy.

"Where?" he asked. How and why were obvious, clear in the sun and shadows falling across his hand where it rested on the granite headstone.

"England. With Giles." Dawn said it as if it was an apology, and maybe it was.

"England," he repeated. "She's gone."

"But she's alive," Buffy chimed in. "And she'll be okay. She has to be."

He couldn't bear to stay with any of them, and the van was long since gone, so he was temporarily homeless, a dangerous thing to be in Sunnydale. Luckily for him, Devon was more artiste than artist so he had both a place to stay and a friend who didn't care to ask what it was he didn't want to discuss.

"You comfortable, man?"

"Slept in worse."

"Yeah. Me, too." Devon turned around with a sympathetic grin. "Get some sleep, Oz. Things look better in the morning or some shit, right?"

"Right."

He slept. He sleeps. He dreams.  


> Willow is coloring, a yellow sky with black stars, a spiraling galaxy of darkness. Dark matter, he thinks, and wonders if they're inside of the sun.
> 
> "We are."
> 
> "I'm at Devon's," he says. "On his couch."
> 
> She smiles, and even through her smile she looks sad. "You are. But you're here, too. In the sun."
> 
> "How are you?"
> 
> "Tara's dead." She stops coloring and when she lifts her crayon from the paper her design fades until the paper is once again blank. "There are never enough colors," she says, returning to her drawing.
> 
> "I'm sorry about Tara," he says, and he is. He and Willow were over and ruined and not yet begun long before Tara, and they are that way now. She was nice when he met her, steel under a shy exterior, and he knows she made Willow happy. "But how are _you_?"
> 
> In Willow's hand the yellow crayon turns to red. "That always happens," she says. "Crayons are okay, it's the hair that makes everyone worry." She laughs bitterly. "I can't change my hair like you, Oz. It's goes badly."
> 
> "Don't want to talk about it, huh?"
> 
> "No. Not about her. Or him." As she colored the red crayon faded back to yellow. "It's better if I don't."
> 
> He nodded. "Pretty flower."
> 
> She brushed her hands over the plant growing at her hip. "Oh, is that back? It comes and goes."
> 
> "What can I do?" he asks.
> 
> "Do you have any crayons?" She touches his hand and when she pulls away she has a fistful of colors. "Oz! Thank you! They look like your hair." She giggles. "All your hair."
> 
> "Are you going to be okay?"
> 
> "I will be. I'm learning to be." She presses a picture into his hand—green pastures full of flowers, no black or yellow to be found. "I'll see you there, okay? Someday."
> 
> Someday. Soon.

  
He stirs. He wakes. He was awake.

Devon was there, slouched at the shabby kitchen table eating something from a blue bowl. "You up, man? Your friends have been calling. That Buffy chick, especially."

"I'll call her back." He joined Devon at the table and silently accepted cereal and juice. "Lucky Charms. Nice."

"Magically delicious, Oz. Like me." Devon paused. "How you doing?"

"Better in the morning, like you said." He put his empty bowl in the sink and rinsed it. "If Buffy calls back, tell her I left, okay?"

"Yeah, sure. Where you going?"

"To buy crayons," he said. "In England."


End file.
